Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

[nosmokes]

it's tough to blast a philanthropy, and to be sure, the gates foundation is doing a hell of a lot of good stuff- a hell of a lot. but much of what it's doing in developing countries and on the african continent in particular are troublesome to me and others, and seem to smack a bit of colonialism. much if not most of the money is going into business ventures based in the west and misguided missions like GMOs and industrial agriculture, when what's needed is appropriate technology for sustainable agriculture. why should we be dumping the same problems we now have and china and india are now having to deal with on africa when we know how to avoid them?
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original-LATimes

***A TIMES INVESTIGATION***

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation


The world's largest philanthropy pours money into investments that are hurting many of the people its grants aim to help.

By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writers
January 7, 2007


*First of two parts*


An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
~snip~
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complete story here

[Mme. Defarge]

1. What an eye opener!

How depressing. Thanks anyway.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Is that the best they can do to...

trash Gates? I suppose if he sold the holdings all the pollution would just go away.

Very few people have actually managed a $60 billion fund and I'm sure not one of them, but from what I hear about it when you get into that stratosphere of moving money around it's not all that easy to find solid investments for a couple hundred million at a time. Makes it a lot tougher if you knock out all the companies who do something wrong somewhere.

[noamnety]

4. Missing the forest for the trees

The important issue here is not trashing Gates.

It's recognizing that development and philanthropy is not necessarily in the best interests of the people it claims to be helping; that capitalist ventures - including the so-called Green Revolution - are often so destructive of the environment that the long term damage outweighs the short term benefits, and in many cases the local population would in fact be better off without our interference at all, because we don't seem to have a clue how to do anything in a sustainable way.

[WiseButAngrySara]

6. Everything seems to have a 'double-edged sword' ... most

obvious to me, in the medical profession, where sometimes the 'treatment' is as bad or worse than the disease.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Sustainable development in the third world is another issue...

and isn't about the mining of resources that's going on by the oil companies. No one in the oil or mining businesses really believes that crap they spiel about bringing industry to the poor natives (but the White Man's Burden is probably in the back of their minds).

Gates originally envisaged his foundation giving computers to the natives, but found out almost immediately that clean water, some food, vaccinations, some pills, and a little education were of more immediate concern to a village that had no electricity to run computers or phones or cable service. He turned the foundation around and gave a speech about this years ago, to the hoots and jeers of the computer idustry who thought he was nuts.

I won't say Gates has turned into Albert Schweitzer, but putting down attempts to bring medicine in to the Third World seems to be a bit OTT.

[femrap]

5. Gates should pressure the polluting companies

to clean up their operations in Africa. They did it here.

Hell, why doesn't Gates loan the polluting assholes the money to invest in cleaning up their operations...that would clean up the environment and give him a decent return on his money.

And to compare the patenting of software to medicines is oranges and apples.

Who dies if they can't get Excel?

Thank you for posting this....gives me some good ideas.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. I don't know if he can...

as a shareholder in a foreign corporation. But, one way or the other, there is a fine balance between the altruism in giving the money away and what you have to do to keep the money coming in.

Has he done it perfectly? Probably not. Could it be done perfectly? Probably not.

[femrap]

11. If Gates wanted to rock the boat, he and Warren

Buffet could probably sink the damn boat. But they choose NOT to.

This is all pretty common sense...the oil boys are polluting and as a result creating health hazards that are killing. Gates could pressure them to clean up their act but he chooses not to.

It's that simple...and everyone knows it. Gates has more $ than God..and if he wanted something done, it would be done.

[rman]

12. Would Gates lose money if he'd do better in helping the poor?

Is that what you're saying?
Is it that the bad things that are happening are in fact profit makers? You bet it is: not polluting is more expensive than polluting - got to externalize costs as much as possible.

[noamnety]

9. I wasn't talking about software

I don't know that Sara was either. I was referring to the Gates Foundation investing about far more in oil companies than it does in disease research and prevention. And so, the bulk of their investments are doing more harm to the environment - thus making people sicker than their health investments are capable of curing.

Long term, cleaning up the pollution from one oil company or another is a questionable remedy to what the companies he's investing in are doing - depleting the natural resources of a country and exporting the profits from it.

The comparison with medicine is exactly on target, I was nodding my head as I read that - and the comparison is not unique to that post.

"Iatrogenesis(eye-uh-tro-GIN-uh-sus): Any adverse mental or physical condition induced in a patient through the effects of treatment by a physician or surgeon. For our purposes, however, we want to introduce this as a more universal idea, as another intellectual tool: Any situation where the “cure” causes more harm than the “cause”. This is a common phenomenon in modern society, but because we have been taught to think about things in discrete little boxes, and not in their relations and interactions, we tend not to see iatrogenesis. Road-building is a good example. The problem is traffic congestion. The cure is to build more roads. But with more roads, new development occurs, which is more spread out, pulling more people into the region where the congestion started, and making them more dependent on more cars. We go from traffic congestion on a small scale, to traffic congestion on a large scale." http://www.insurgentamerican.net/intellectual-hardball/lesson-2/

[TheMadMonk]

3. Is anyone surprised? n/t

[KoKo]

10. Bill and Melinda might "think" they are "doing good" but their Accountants

are puttin the money out there and the Accountants are putting the money where the big tax breaks are for Bill and Melinda.

After all...who has time to take care and monitor every step of the way money is donated when one is a Multi-Billionaire?

Don't blame Bill and Melinda...blame their Accountants.